Deadline

Hollywood's 107-year-old industry trade publication Variety and 6-year-old online competitor Deadline, headed by editor Nikki Finke, may soon be housed under the same corporate roof. Penske Media Corp., the owner of Deadline and six other online properties, is now the leading bidder for Variety, partnered with private equity fund Shamrock Capital Advisors, according to two knowledgeable people not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The company, led by Jay Penske, the 33-year-old son of automobile magnate Roger Penske, could close a deal to purchase the paper in the next three weeks for around $30 million, one of the people added.

A day after hearing hours of impassioned testimony from a divided trucking industry, California air quality regulators on Friday postponed deadlines for aging heavy-duty trucks to comply with the nation's toughest diesel air pollution rules. The action by the state Air Resources Board will give small fleets, lightly used trucks and those operating in rural areas more time to upgrade to newer, cleaner models or install filters to remove soot from their exhaust. Officials say the changes will slow pollution cuts for several years but still allow the state to reach its goal of cutting diesel emissions 85% by 2020.

MEXICO CITY - Five years and millions of U.S.-supplied dollars later, Mexican authorities are acknowledging they are still a long way from purging and improving local and federal police forces, among the most corrupt institutions in the country. The deadline for certifying hundreds of thousands of police nationwide -- already blown once -- is Oct. 29. This week, the government said the process will not be completed by that date and suggested there should not be a deadline at all. “We will never reach 100%; it's impossible,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, the nation's top security official, said at a forum on public safety.

JERUSALEM -- With Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations still deadlocked a week before their current round expires, negotiating teams met Tuesday with U.S. envoy Martin Indyk in Jerusalem to discuss extending the troubled talks. Nine months of meetings between Israeli and Palestinian teams have yielded little agreement, and both sides' tough positions have stymied the effort to secure a framework for working toward a two-state solution to the conflict. The U.S.-mediated negotiations broke down last month over Israel's delay in releasing a group of Palestinian prisoners as promised.

University of California officials have extended the application period for undergraduate admissions after a computer slowdown kept some students from filing their online applications in time for Monday night's deadline. The new deadline is 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. Susan Wilbur, UC's director of undergraduate admissions, said her office is investigating the cause of the computerized malfunction that at least temporarily blocked some panicked last-minute filers from submitting applications on Sunday and Monday nights.

A top Democrat in the Senate said Monday that Congress should pass a debt-ceiling increase no later than mid-July -- weeks before a Treasury Department deadline -- to avoid the expected turmoil in the financial markets if partisan infighting prolongs the debate. "We ought to have plenty of breathing room -- this should not be an hour, a day or even a week [before the deadline]," Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said during a call with reporters.

The Hollywood trade paper Variety has been acquired by Penske Media Corp. and its financial backer, hedge fund Third Point, for about $25 million, in a power shift for the world of show business and a transformation of the industry's most famous news brand. Santa Monica-based Penske already owns Deadline.com, the website that has in just six years become a dominant news source for show business professionals and, together with online competitor Wrap and a resurgent Hollywood Reporter, stolen much of the thunder that belonged to Variety for its 107-year history.

Some civil rights attorneys are questioning the decision by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck to set a deadline for removing Occupy L.A. protesters encamped on the City Hall grounds. The mayor and chief announced that the deadline would be 12:01 a.m. Monday, though many protesters are vowing to stay. While civil rights activists have praised the LAPD for showing restraint with protesters, they fear that setting a deadline could cause problems.

October 21, 2013 | By Paige St. John, This post has been corrected, as indicated below.

SACRAMENTO -- A panel of federal judges has given Gov. Jerry Brown an additional 28 days to come up with long-term solutions to the state's prison crowding problems. In an order issued Monday, the judges moved the deadline for California to remove about 9,600 inmates from state lockups to Feb. 24, adding almost a month to their last deadline of Jan. 27. It previously was Dec. 31. They also ordered the state to continue negotiating for solutions with lawyers representing California's 134,000 prisoners.

WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials said that even after Tuesday's extended deadline, they will try to arrange coverage starting Jan. 1 for people who have had trouble getting through the government's sometimes-balky enrollment website. “Our highest priority is making sure that everyone who wants to enroll to have health care coverage by Jan. 1 is able to do so, particularly since consumers had a hard time accessing HealthCare.gov in October and November,” administration spokesperson Julie Bataille said in a statement.

San Diego Opera set a new deadline of May 19 to obtain new funding or close down after the resignation Thursday of 13 members of its board of directors, including President Karen Cohn. The new deadline will give the reconstituted board time to raise money to keep the company alive -- though what form it might take is uncertain. Under discussion at Thursday's meeting was a motion that stated in part that "additional information has come to the attention of the board regarding the prospects of new funding.

April 15 is tax day, which brings with it the annual scramble to file returns in time. But unless you owe money to Uncle Sam, procrastinators can breathe a sigh of relief. Only those who are due to pay the Internal Revenue Service are penalized for missing the deadline, while the approximately 75% of filers who get refunds can turn in their paperwork after Tuesday with no penalty. PHOTOS: World's most expensive cities The costs of dawdling for those who owe even a little money to the government can be steep.

WASHINGTON - Negotiators for Iran and six world powers said Wednesday that they have completed preliminary discussions on Iran's disputed nuclear program and are dashing to finish a long-term comprehensive agreement by July 20. Wrapping up two days of talks in Vienna, the negotiators said they would meet next month to draft a final deal in hope of reaching an accord before the midsummer deadline. The results are hardly assured because the process will entail difficult decisions on a number of contentious issues.

For more than a half century, few in this town have loved and lived the Lakers like Joe Smith. The former record mogul has four season seats on the baseline next to the Lakers bench. He has held those seats since the team arrived in Los Angeles. He has become as much of a fixture under the basket as the ballboys and Laker girls. No single ticket holder has endured longer, and certainly no single fan has invested more. For 54 years, Joe Smith has loved the Lakers graciously, gratefully and unconditionally.

Even with 1.2 million people enrolled by Monday's deadline, California's health exchange isn't done adding to the Obamacare rolls - and it won't be for quite some time. In the months to come, it's estimated that several hundred thousand more Californians could qualify for a special enrollment period as college students graduate, families move and workers change jobs. But health insurers say the state's current rules for late sign-ups rely too much on the honor system and invite abuse by people waiting until they get sick.

Five former Bell council members - all convicted but facing retrial on additional corruption-related charges - must decide Thursday whether to take a plea bargain that could put them behind bars for up to four years. The Los Angeles district attorney's office offered the deal on the condition that George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo, Victor Bello and George Mirabal each agree to it. If not all of them sign off on the deal, the offer would be taken off the table and the former city leaders would head to a second trial with a judge who has indicated repeatedly that she has grown weary of the 2010 Bell salary scandal.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will push back by six weeks the deadline for enrolling for health insurance without facing a penalty, a change officials say is intended to clarify a series of mismatched deadlines outlined in the law and not a response to problems with its insurance website. Consumers will have until March 31 to sign up for insurance without paying a tax penalty in 2014, the White House announced late Wednesday. That date was already the end of open enrollment, but under the individual mandate rules it was not clear whether consumers who waited that long to enroll would still face penalties.

WASHINGTON - Defying party leaders, Republican Todd Akin did not withdraw by Tuesday's deadline from the Senate race in Missouri, promising - for now - a protracted campaign as his “legitimate rape” comments will be used by opponents to define the GOP. A second day of pressure from across the GOP hierarchy apparently did little to sway Akin, who vowed to “rush into the gunfire” in a race that nonpartisan analysts said would be ...

WASHINGTON - The federal government's online health insurance marketplace stumbled Monday as tens of thousands of Americans streamed to the HealthCare.gov website seeking to beat a midnight deadline for enrolling in coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Technicians were able to get the site back online after it went down in the early morning hours Monday, according to federal officials. But by midday, visitors to the site were getting an automated message alerting them that high volumes made it necessary to wait to set up an account or enroll in coverage.

Washington state accused the federal government Monday of missing crucial legal deadlines to clean up 56 million gallons of highly radioactive waste at the former Hanford nuclear weapons site in southeastern Washington, demanding a new set of schedules by April 15. Gov. Jay Inslee and state Atty. Gen. Bob Ferguson sent a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz demanding that eight new double-shelled storage tanks be built to hold waste that is in leaky underground tanks with single steel walls.